What to do with the site of a mass shooting?

By Brady Dennis

September 20

On a Friday evening in May, more than two dozen town leaders in Newtown voted unanimously to tear down Sandy Hook Elementary School and rebuild on the same site.

The spot where a gunman killed 20 children and six adults last December would, in time, become a different place entirely. Its design would include 26 glass cupolas to honor the victims and a relocated main entrance so that students and teachers wouldn’t have to arrive along the same drive where so many once fled a killer.The decision, which local residents will vote on in an upcoming referendum, came after months of agonizing over what to do with the building, which has sat empty since the shooting. Some people wanted to renovate the existing school; others wanted to build elsewhere.